Dilemmas won?t just go away
There are times when we need to tell it like it is: Greece has money to cover the cost of public sector wages and pensions until July.
Many European governments, meanwhile, are hesitant about giving Greece any more money, firstly because the reaction of their voters has been so intense and secondly because they think that any more assistance will just be blown away. At the same time in Athens, the PASOK government is hesitant, even at this point, to really begin cutting away the fat from public sector spending, while it is also afraid to accept giving Greece?s international creditors any kind of assurances because of the political cost.
For its part, the opposition does nothing but reject all the terms set by the lenders, even going so far as to challenge the need for immediate privatizations.
What the protagonists of this political drama obviously fail to grasp is that even if there were elections, they would still all end up sitting around the same table looking at the same stringent terms and facing the same dilemmas: Default or restructuring? Euro or drachma?
